In 2013, I went to Pebble Beach for an expensive car show. I met a couple guys that started newlydivorceddating.com. They told me they purchased thousands of fake starter profiles, so the site wouldn't seem dead.
Tangent:
I was a "pickup artist" (2005-2010). Most of it is creepy bullshit, but the process teaches you a powerful aspect of hookup-style dating (as opposed to courting for a long-term relationship): guys need to be ok with embarrassing themselves.
I'm sure there are ways to optimize online dating, but the SNR was always bad, and it only seems to get worse.
So yea I'm encouraging guys (or whatever the current term is for the one that takes the initiative) to work thru rejection.
Of course, it's not that simple. If you simply memorize interactions that have been posted online, you'll quickly find yourself subtly outed as a weirdo.
But that feeling of rejection is important. That's how your mind+body learns in real time. It's much harder for some of us that didn't quite socialize properly at younger ages (often due to horrible things like broken families, bullies, etc).
And there are of course lighter approaches (what i described earlier often occurs within bars/nightclubs) within more casual groups that may involve more introverts.
However, if you can get over rejection (and certainly pace it; don't be a sociopath) it will dramatically accelerate so many things (many of which do lead back to dating), and you can avoid these scammy dating sites altogether (I personally find 100% guarantees like this very compelling and will regularly consider if I can can just completely avoid entire classes of stuff).
very interesting. I bought The Game 10+ years ago and read 3/4 of it. I just can’t get myself to do tactics like magic, negging, and psych-ops. Though, I will confirm it works. Seen with my own eyes many times in disbelief. Couldn’t believe women fall for what seem like such corny and ridiculous behavior. I do think women are much more socially focused, tend to follow (sheep behavior) and in a miraculous turn of events if you ignore them, or don’t show interest they want what they can’t have.
I’m in my mid forties now and frankly don’t have the energy and metal capacity to play The Game. It’s only gotten much worse (most dramatic for westerns) for more traditional and “old fashioned” men to find partners. We can thank instagram, snapchat, tiktok and perhaps most negatively onlyfans. I have traveled allover the world and find South American women still have a feminine mindset and want to genuinely settle down and start a family. Again more traditional; I assume because faith and family are such strong forces down south.
Some may read my comment as “toxic masculinity” or whatever buzzword of the day is used to shame and emasculate men, but clearly something is broken with western and asian civilizations as marriage and birth rates are plummeting.
Yes "the game" is actually impossibly complex for any book to capture, and I agree much tech has made it more challenging in many ways. I do have to recognize that quite a few of my friends found their wives online.
That said, I think finding a wife in countries that tend more traditional is a great approach.
I've seen it work over and over. In one striking case, there was also very high mutual appreciation, from the guy for her traditional qualities, and from the girl for his pragmatism and diligence.
> if you ignore them, or don’t show interest they want what they can’t have
A girl I knew told me it wasn't any fun when the guy would just do whatever to please her. She found it boring and uninteresting. Rather she enjoyed the chase, so to speak, and said she wanted to work for it.
I assume there's some variance, but I kept that in the back of my mind.
Sorry I didn't mention maturity matters. "The game" is truly complex, so 2 more things:
First, nearly every western girl goes thru a "hoe" phase. This is when they're figuring themselves out. And we go thru this phase too obviously, but we still have this double-standard nonsense which blinds us to what a woman really is, so I have to call it out.
Second, you have to be cool with this. This is the importance of rejection experience. You need to go thru it, know that you're alright, and that calm goes sooo far in getting you laid/married.
Everyone makes mistakes. It doesn't help if you're visibly uncomfortable because of a mistake she made a while back. To be clear, the mistake I speak of is sleeping with shitty guys during her learning phase ("the chase").
But I like The Game and the whole pickup artist thing because it breaks down the mechanics in a way that I think is more accessible to "nerds".
The bar/nightclub excursions compress social dynamics from weeks/months to hours. It's very instructive for dating and business/job-hunting.
But the endgame is even more important. I know of at least 5 couples that started off playing the game around each other, and later married. Attractive people, just too busy banging all the other attractive friends (yea, San Francisco lol).
This is just one expression among the vicissitudes of social expression, but don't forget the fact it is also very much a numbers game (when zoomed out far enough).
This is going to sound a bit wild, and only viable under 70 or so, but I've met a lot of 55-70 expats in walkable southeast asian cities. There's obviously varying circumstances so do the research, but you can almost get adopted by your landlord family, where you're getting home cooked meals, rides, doors held open, etc. This part of the world is so family oriented, it just comes naturally to many of them.
I've personally found that the most comfortable human spaces incorporate layers of exposure as described in the article.
I also find our cats' preferences to mirror ours (even when we're not around), with the added depth of how they fit into cabinets and other small spaces.
I feel as tho our failure to architect for cats properly is more a symptom of laymen approaching architecture.
Aside: on a much larger scale, I've found commercial construction often sucks at this (except at the high end) while haphazard diy builds often naturally incorporate this.
There's a real "nerd layman" approach to architecture that is instantly visible - and they never really know why they feel uneasy in their incredibly brightly lit daylight-colored room.
But even people who seem to either study architecture/design/layout or figure it out accidentally leave the cat to its own devices - but everyone knows cats like to be in boxes, so provide various "boxes" for your cat in the design and they'll use them.
This is why floor to ceiling windows in living spaces don’t feel quite right. It’s much more comfortable to have a low barrier and then a window because there’s something involved into us which makes being on a platform feel precarious.
People are confused by this because generally, they see the options as full height window or conventional window. Everyone knows that more light is better. But the ideal is either a full height window, which is blocked at the bottom by seating or a sofa or plants or something, or a window that comes within 30cm or so of the floor. It also means that people outside on the ground have a much more obscured view in and people in the room can continue their visibility by moving back-and-forth very easily.
I have hit points in this in my career where making a moral stand would be harmful to me (for minor things, nothing as serious as this). It's a very tempting and incentivized decision to make to choose personal gain over ideal. Idealists usually hold strong until they can convince themselves a greater good is served by breaking their ideals. These types that succumb to that reasoning usually ironically ending up doing the most harm.
Ever since I first bothered to meditate on it, about 15 years ago, I've believed that if AI ever gets anywhere near as good as it's creators want it to be, then it will be coopted by thugs. It didn't feel like a bold prediction to make at the time. It still doesn't.
Yes. There will always be people who see opportunity in using it destructively. Best case scenario is that others will use it to counter that. But it is usually easier to destroy than to protect. So we could have a constant AI war going on somewhere in the clouds, occasionally leaking new disasters into the human world.
I keep hearing this word "progress". We've been stuck here on earth for 1.5 billion years, we're not progressing, we haven't gone anywhere. We're not going anywhere. There is nowhere better for lightyears in any direction. Don't delude yourself with that narcissistic bunk and don't play with fire.
I cherish my UCSD education and (equally, if not more) all the socializing that came with it.
The concept (and aims) of university faces the same headwinds of any business based on intellectual property in America: artificial moats of IP law.
China's manufacturing success partially stems from the government's inability to enforce IP law.
Thankfully, ideas want to be free, and LLMs give us the best-yet UI to information.
To me, Hacker News is a university. It's a place where I come to learn (from thousands of "teachers") and these "teachers" are actually also students, learning as well.
Tangent:
I was a "pickup artist" (2005-2010). Most of it is creepy bullshit, but the process teaches you a powerful aspect of hookup-style dating (as opposed to courting for a long-term relationship): guys need to be ok with embarrassing themselves.
I'm sure there are ways to optimize online dating, but the SNR was always bad, and it only seems to get worse.
So yea I'm encouraging guys (or whatever the current term is for the one that takes the initiative) to work thru rejection.
Of course, it's not that simple. If you simply memorize interactions that have been posted online, you'll quickly find yourself subtly outed as a weirdo.
But that feeling of rejection is important. That's how your mind+body learns in real time. It's much harder for some of us that didn't quite socialize properly at younger ages (often due to horrible things like broken families, bullies, etc).
And there are of course lighter approaches (what i described earlier often occurs within bars/nightclubs) within more casual groups that may involve more introverts.
However, if you can get over rejection (and certainly pace it; don't be a sociopath) it will dramatically accelerate so many things (many of which do lead back to dating), and you can avoid these scammy dating sites altogether (I personally find 100% guarantees like this very compelling and will regularly consider if I can can just completely avoid entire classes of stuff).
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